Oh come on, Paramount Plus! You couldn’t keep this up until at least Saturday Night!

Well, I don’t have time to replace this, so my apologies. There is a version on their YouTube channel and Paramount+ on streaming, but I don’t know where to see the episodes elsewhere. Even the Pluto TV Star Trek channels don’t show it. They’re still treating the show terribly. It bothers me. So here’s what I said about the show, and I hope you find a way to watch it. Give it a chance.

Watch this one while you can. I’m just hoping Paramount Plus’ official YouTube channel doesn’t change their minds before this article goes live.

Star Trek: The Animated Series could be considered the last two years of the Enterprise‘s five year mission. Produced by Filmation, they had hoped to make it a prime time series. Hanna-Barbera had success there with Jonny Quest and The Flintstones and it has been attempted in years since, with only comedies like The Simpsons gaining any real ground. Instead, NBC agreed to air it, possibly because the original series was doing so well in syndication, but on Saturday mornings. The show lasted for two seasons, joining the original series’ three, thus the full five-year mission.

I would love to make this installment either “Yesteryear”, the episode that gave us a look into Spock’s past and the canon depiction of his pet sehlat, or “The Practical Joker”, which featured a proto-holodeck, complete with trying to kill the people inside. I don’t know why they kept using that thing. However, for Star Trek Day 2024 (September 8, 1966 being the original series’ debut), the official Paramount+ YouTube channel gave us first episodes of various Star Trek series, including the original and the other animated Star Trek, Lower Decks. (I don’t know about the third one, Prodigy, which I’ve already reviewed.)

So instead we get “Beyond The Furthest Star”, as NCC-1701 comes across a strange ship, which houses a very serious threat to the galaxy. Most of the original cast returns, minus Walter Koenig. James Doohan would actually voice numerous characters over the course of the series, and both Leonard Nimoy and George Takei would get some serious voice acting in after this. Takei already had done dubbing for Japanese movies (including a Godzilla movie) while Nimoy started a short-lived audio drama group. William Shatner played Two-Face in the last Batman ’66 direct to video animated movie before West passed away, the only time the character was interpreted into the 1966 style. I hope to see that someday. Still, we have this until they change their minds, so enjoy.